Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) (20 page)

She threw on shorts and a t-shirt, and then, automatically, Lambent. Which felt odd with the shorts, but she didn’t feel like jeans as it was warm in the Sanctuary.

Daffyd was waiting for her with what she tentatively thought was a mining lamp. He led the way through the rooms and tunnels to a door she hadn’t been seen before. It swung open at his touch.

“Here she is,” he said, stepping aside for Linn to enter.

Linn walked through the doorway and stopped. She felt very young and grubby suddenly. She’d thought she was going to meet her grandfather... there were a lot of people here, all in odd garbs and all looking grim.

“Linnaea.” Heff stepped away from the long table to take her hand. She let him lead her forward. He turned to the assembled council and said simply, “My granddaughter.”

Linn looked around and saw her grandmother, Hypatia... there was Quetzalcoatl, resplendent in an iridescent white suit. She blinked at the sight, as it was rather loud.

“Why is she here?” a tall immortal she didn’t recognize demanded. He was dressed in lion skins that contrasted with his deep black skin. She looked at his and focused. His power was a light golden yellow in color.

“She will lead a team of Coblyns to the launch site, where they will make any needed repairs, and then the warhead will be launched.”

“But why send a child?” He leaned forward, and Linn was surprised to realize he was concerned for her, not angry at her presence as she had initially assumed.

“Because I need someone who isn’t a beacon of power. I don’t have any other halflings on hand, and I know she can do this. Daffyd...” Heff turned to the diminutive immortal. “Will you follow her?”

“Yes, we will,” the goblin king assured him gravely.

Heff turned back. Linn was getting the feeling this was not new ground. “They will leave tomorrow afternoon before dusk, which gives the rest of us time to get in place.”

Much later, Linn stood beside the zodiac remembering the rest of his briefing, most of it intended for her. The Coblyns were terrible at getting around aboveground. Her orienteering training was going to come in handy. Once she’d been dismissed, with a brief hug from her grandfather, she had given up on sleep, instead going to the Scholar’s office.

Somewhere a topo map had been found and she had it, ready for the mission, but she wanted to see what they were getting into. It took her just minutes to find the location, and she zoomed in on the location, staring at the bunkers. Four rectangular depressions in the green on one side, each with a white courtyard? She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was some kind of concrete pad. Those were the munitions bunkers. The two dark green slits in the ground were ditches for the launchers, she had been told.

Blackie bumped her hand and brought Linn back to the present. “Hey, you aren’t supposed to be here,” she told him. He just looked at her steadily, his eyes glowing. She sighed.

“Daffyd?” She looked around for the goblin king.

“Yes, child?” He appeared at her elbow, making her jump.

Linn thought if the fiction was that she was supposed to be leading them was to hold up, he shouldn’t call her child.

“Blackie wants to go.”

“Well, at least we don’t need to camouflage him,” was the cheerful response.

Linn snorted. They had painted her face green and brown. The Coblyns' green skin blended with the lush vegetation well. She looked down at the kitten. “Don’t you dare put your claws out in that rubber boat,” she threatened.

He flattened his ears at her. She put a hand on his head, realizing as she did so that he really had grown... or chosen to get bigger... as he was waist high to her now. As high as he was in the dream.

“Time to go, Linn,” Daffyd interrupted her train of thought softly.

She climbed into the zodiac awkwardly. She’d never been in one before. Blackie flowed in softly, his pads careful on the bottom. He had taken her seriously. They were pulled off the beach by Naiads, who would take them to their destination beach.

Linn sat on the surface of the water, feeling it under her butt, only a layer of rubber between her and the ocean. She shivered.

Daffyd gripped her shoulder. “The Naiads are bringing a fog to cover us.”

She just nodded. She’d known that was coming. She went over the map again in her head. The ocean was abnormally calm, little waves slapping at the boats.

They were headed for Dillingham Airfield, and after looking at the maps she had decided they would land at Mokuleia Beach Park. It was going to be a long day. Daffyd had started the quiet little motor and was leaning on it contemplatively, not looking like he was going to talk much. Blackie was asleep, or faking it well. Linn just felt like she was going to throw up.

Supposedly none of the enemy had any idea what they were up to. This was supposed to be a walk in the park. Or at least a walk in the dark, wet woods. The munitions bunkers hadn’t been used in three decades. They looked from the satellite shots like they were pretty overgrown.

When Linn could finally hear the roar of the surf, she sighed in relief. This might be the most dangerous part of the mission, but at least she had a job to do. The sitting and waiting was going to kill her.

“Ready?” Daffyd asked, loud enough for her to hear over the surf. There was no point in trying to be quiet, because the waves would cover any sound. The tricky part was going over unfamiliar ground in the dark while trying not to be seen. The Coblyns were under orders not to use excess power that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

“Ready,” Linn replied, picking up her pack. She would put it on once on land. If she fell overboard with it on, it would drag her down.

She crouched and held onto the straps as the Naiads surfed the little boat through the waves. The grate of sand under her feet almost knocked her on her face. She was out of the boat on that momentum, with Blackie just ahead of her and Daffyd not far behind. A swarm of silent Coblyns accompanied them, her team of twelve engineers for the Nike.

The thick fog obscured much of the beach, but the pure white sand made it easier to see as they trotted across it. With the cool, damp fog, there were no humans on the beach, Linn was relieved to note. The hardest part came next.

On the verge of Highway 930, they stopped and listened. No car engines broke the eerie quiet of the fog. Linn had them cross in groups of three. She was the last one to go. All was still. When she reached the other side she could see the Coblyns doing something to the fence.

“Linn, close your eyes and let me lead you,” Daffyd asked.

“I thought I was leading,” the nervous girl snapped. This was going too easily. The fog was worrying her, and she kept thinking of her dream.

“You are. It’s just this... is dangerous. There is no try, only do or not do.”

Linn was startled into a laugh, which she quickly suppressed. “You did that on purpose.”

“Of course. I’m well aware of the resemblance. Only I’m older than nine hundred years.”

She sighed. “All right, Daffy, I trust you.” Closing her eyes and holding out her hands, she whispered, “That sounds so wrong...”

There was a brief tingle, and then Daffyd told her she could open her eyes again. She looked around her. They were on the other side of the fence, but it looked intact.

“I’ll think about that one later,” she promised herself. Daffy just chuckled.

Dillingham airport was no longer very active, and with the fog any air travel was socked in. Still, she wanted to get across the airstrip as fast as possible. This time, they all ran as a group. She could barely see the huge number twenty-six that was one of her landmarks on the place to cross the airstrip.

Once they were across, they stopped briefly to regroup and let Linn orient herself with the map and compass. She pointed in the direction they needed to go and they set off through the fog. She was looking for the long-unused taxiway that jutted off the landward side of the airstrip. They found it in about five minutes, and she led them up.

She relaxed a little as they hiked along the crumbling asphalt. Being out on the airstrip made her feel exposed. Now it was a matter of not getting lost in the heavy fog. She knew from the mental picture in her head that there was open cropland off to their left, and a double row of planted trees to the right. What she could see was gray, and the ground in front of her was ancient asphalt with weeds coming through it.

She stopped and listened. Nothing. It was like being wrapped in a wet wool blanket. Daffyd touched her shoulder. She checked the compass and they veered to the right slightly.

“I wish the fog would lift a little.”

Daffyd chuckled. “Oh, it’s a good thing. Trust me, I’ve done a few of these outings.”

“Then why am I along?”

“Our sense of direction is terrible,” he admitted cheerfully. “We always need a human or guide to find our objective above ground. We’re engineers, not orienteers. Keep going, girl.”

“So what happens when we get there?”

“We assess the Nike your grandfather hid, repair if needed, load the warhead onto it, and launch it. From there...” He shrugged. “Not my worry.”

“The Coblyns don’t worry much, do they?” she voiced a thought she’d had for a while now.

“It’s not natural to us, no,” he admitted cheerfully. She supposed it was a perk, now that she’d learned that she couldn’t stop thinking.

She stumbled at the edge of a wash out. “Here it is...” she said. “Now, right off here...”

The path was right where it was supposed to be, but vegetation, wet from the fog, hung directly over it. She was soaked by the time they had taken a dozen steps into the woods. She shivered at the touch of a vine down the back of her neck. It wasn’t cold, just really wet. She was starting to feel claustrophobic in the fog.

She knew from the satellite photos that the path wound down through the bunkers. It led to a big, grassy area behind them, and Heff had said it was probably made by cattle. If they stayed on the path they couldn’t get lost now.

Linn felt tense. Nothing was happening. It seemed to her that something ought to happen. They were on a clandestine expedition, and there should be trouble, right? She rolled her shoulders, feeling the weight of the pack.

The bunkers were much larger in person than they looked on the satellite photos. She stopped dead as they entered the clearing. She knew it was the clearing because the fog was marginally lighter. A cow stood in front of her, looking at her curiously. Several others loomed in the fog.

“We’re here,” she told Daffyd. Blackie scooted his head under her hand. His fur was soaking wet. “How long is this going to take? It’s getting dark and we are all wet. I want to build a fire and get dry.”

“Good idea. I don’t know how long it will take. It all depends how well the government sealed the bunkers before they abandoned this site.”

“Oh, well, then we will be here awhile.”

Daffyd laughed at her sarcasm. “We will open a bunker and you can get out of the wet.”

Linn nodded and let the team go to work. The four Coblyns who had been carrying the warhead came and set it down next to her. She eyed the metal cylinder dubiously.

“It isn’t radioactive,” one of them assured her.

“Great,” she replied shortly, feeling grumpy. The fog and the fear were getting to her. And this thing was not her idea of company.

Chapter 28

Linn was watching the Coblyns at the bunker access door. They were holding their hands over it and chanting something softly. The Coblyn standing with her followed her gaze.

“It looks like magic,” Linn muttered.

“Do you know Clarke’s third law?” the unnamed one asked quietly.

“The one about technology?”

“‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ That’s the one.”

Linn looked down at him. “I thought you weren’t supposed to tell me these kinds of things.”

“Nothing you didn’t already know. You might not be able to put a name to it just yet, is all.” He didn’t look up at her, just spoke casually, but she felt like she’d been granted a glimpse of a secret.

She stood thinking for a long moment, then asked, “I know you don’t like to give out your names. Do you mind if I call you Clark?”

He looked up at her and grinned. It was a slightly horrifying sight with his wrinkly green skin and snaggly teeth, but she was used to Coblyns now.

“I’d be honored,” he assured her with a chuckle.

She smiled back. “So they are affecting the molecular structure of the door. Why the chanting?”

“Tradition!” He laughed. “Come on, they’ve got it open.”

Linn led the way to the now open door. When she stepped through it, a wave of musty odor rolled over her.

“Gah!” She sneezed. Moldy dankness assaulted her senses. It was pitch dark in there, too. She fumbled a headlight out of her pocket and switched it on. The beam of light showed her an empty hallway.

Blackie stayed on her flank as she walked forward into the hallway. At the end of the hall there was an ordinary door. Linn tried the handle and was surprised when it turned. The door swung open.